Stop Trying to Convince Trump Supporters
For the last four years, social media has been flooded with posts about not letting politics or a difference of opinion come between families or friendships. I mostly agree with this. In many cases, we shouldn’t let differences define our relationships with other people — and, yes, this includes politics. During the 2008 and 2012 presidential election, I never once thought that anyone who voted for John McCain or Mitt Romney was a bad person. I didn’t lose respect for them or allow their vote to affect our relationship. Whatever their politics, McCain and Romney proved themselves to be good men. I didn’t agree with their policy decisions or the platforms they proposed, but I respected them as presidential nominees.
This will come as a shock to a minority of Americans, but Donald Trump is no John McCain or Mitt Romney. He’s never been a good man. His history speaks for itself, but it bares repeating that he has been repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct and/or assault. He’s on tape saying things good men don’t say — and if you don’t believe those men exist, you probably aren’t with a very good man. (I’m not saying every man who says something misogynistic is a bad person, but repetition in the face of education says a lot about a person.) Over and over Trump has lied to Americans and those lies have been exposed by multiple creditable sources. Often, we simply need to read or playback his own recorded words to expose those lies for ourselves. His supporters claim, “he didn’t mean it that way” or that his statements are “taken out of context,” but when you ask them what the context is, or if they can provide some evidence as to why they believe his statement has been taken out of context, they can’t provide anything other than their own interpretation of what he’s said.
It’s incredible that any of this needs to be repeated — so maybe it really doesn’t. Maybe our efforts shouldn’t be directed toward Trump supporters, but toward those who still defend his supporters. It’s become glaringly obvious that those who still support this man will do so no matter what he does at this point. As he said, he could shoot someone in the middle of the street in broad daylight and his supporters would still vote for him.
I support listening to the other side in an effort to understand them, I even offer compassion to them as a fellow human being, but I do not have to respect their opinion. I do not have to respect the opinion of someone who votes for a man who makes fun of disabled people, calls war heroes “losers,” ignores proven Russian bounties on American Soldiers, keeps children in cages (to the point of death in some cases), uses his presidency as a way to make money, and largely contributed to the deaths of 200,000 Americans because he (admittedly) lied about how dangerous the Corona virus would be. I do not have to respect people like this (warning: NSFW pictures). This is just a short list. No matter your politics, there are a multitude of reasons why one shouldn’t vote for Trump.
But this is an old argument.
As I said, we need to focus on those still defending Trump supporters, and we need to do it more respectfully than many of us treat actual Trump supporters. I admit, I’ve taken rude and cheap shots at Trump supporters on occasion and immediately regretted it. If anyone is bored and/or obsessed enough with my thoughts on the matter to go through my social media pages, they’ll notice there’s a lot of things that I’ve deleted that may have shown up on their timeline. I’ve always been a bit trigger happy, but I’m usually pretty quick to retract. We all have room for growth.
We need to get sympathizers to understand the difference between politics and humanity — the difference between respecting differences and being complicit in injustice. It’s certainly true that people need people, but if your people are contributing to the oppression and literal death of other people, maybe you need to reevaluate your people. Am I speaking to you from a very high horse? Sure. Moral relativism may seem edgy and cool, but it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and there’s a big difference between theoretical morality and morality of convenience. To that point, there’s also a big difference between politics and human decency, and at some point, we all have to choose.
